Tag: Meditation

Looking for treasure

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What is the most precious gem in the world?  Certainly this life is precious — the opportunity to be alive is an irreplaceable gift — but can we really appreciate this life for what it is? If we want to find the precious gem in our life, where do we begin? Where do we look? Should we look outside somewhere, or should we look inside? And what does it mean to look inside? Are we really going to find something of value in our body, perhaps in our head or our belly? By pursuing these questions with your whole body and mind, you can discover the truth …. for yourself. But no matter how hard you try, you will never find what is truly precious if you look outside of yourself. You have to look within.

Dennis Genpo Merzel, The Path of the Human Being: Zen Teachings on the Bodhisattva Way

Taking our place

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Each of us has a place in this world. Taking that place, I have come to feel, is our real job as human beings. We are not generic people, we are individuals, and when we appreciate that fact completely and allow ourselves to embrace it and grow into it fully, we see that our unique place in this world is the one thing that gives us a sense of ultimate fulfillment.

To take our place is to mature, and to grow into what we are. Mostly we take maturity for granted, as if it were something that comes quite naturally and completely as our bodies grow and our minds and hearts fill up with life experience. In fact, however, few of us are truly mature individuals; few of us really occupy our places. We are merely living out a dream of maturity, a set of received notions and images that passes for adulthood. What does it really mean to grow up? How do we do the work that will nurture a truly mature heart from which can flow healing words and deeds? Each of our lives depends on our undertaking the exploration that these questions urge us toward. And the mystery is that the whole world depends on each of us to take this human journey.

Norman Fischer, Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

Not running after techniques

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‘I have been four months with you, and you have still not given me a method or technique.’ 

‘A method?’ said the Master. ‘What on earth would you want a method for?’

‘To attain inner freedom.’

The Master roared with laughter. ‘You need great skill indeed to set yourself free by means of the trap called a method.’

Anthony de Mello,  Awakening: Conversations with the Master

Sunday Quote: Where to put our attention

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Don’t look for meaning in the words.

Listen to the silences.

Samuel Beckett

Meaning unfolds slowly

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Meaning does not come to us in finished form, ready-made; it must be found, created, received, constructed. We grow our way toward it. And sometimes the precious bit of true self, the unlived bit of soul, hides in psychological complexes, in illness, even in tragedy, even in sin…Some mysterious power uses what we see as horrific as as the defeat of all our hopes to bring about our salvation.

Ann Bedford Ulanov, Jungian Psychoanalyst.

Why accepting the ordinary is good

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It’s difficult to be ordinary and accept the triviality of our life. That’s why most of the time we feel frustrated, because we think somehow things are going to be different, or that they should be different, don’t we? We sense that life shouldn’t be just getting up in the morning, having breakfast, getting bored, having a cry with one’s spouse, going to the toilet, eating, getting bored at work, coming back, watching television, going to bed, getting up in the morning, and so on, day after day after day.  We feel that somehow there must be something else. So we go on a trip around the world – and we find that even on the other side of the world, we still have to get up, we still have to go to the toilet, we still have to eat, we still get happy and get bored with ourselves, we still get annoyed and depressed. We still get the same old “me” – whether it is here, on in California or in India or anywhere. So seeing the way things are is a very important realization because then we can actually work with life as it is, rather than expecting or dreaming about it.

Ajahn Sundara, Taking Refuge.